Dec 7
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost quotation of an article that celebrates the successful court challenge to the Biden Administration's vaccine mandates. This appears in the Heidelblog.
Clark needs to really vet his sources, or perhaps he has in a tragic way. The inflammatory reference, in the article he quotes from, to a 'federal mandate regime' is most unfortunate seeing that the mandates are based on the findings and advise of medical experts in the midst of a pandemic that has killed over 750k Americans in less than 2 years
The celebration to the successful court challenges to mandates based on advice from medical experts shows how narrow the vision is becoming for more and more Christians. Thus, complaints about American society made by Christian scholars like Carl Trueman in his book about the modern self appear to involve more projection than analysis.
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Dec 11
To W. Robert Godfrey and his Church School lesson on the effects of the end of Christendom on history and the present. This appeared in the Abounding Grace Radio blog (see https://agradio.org/ )
Godfrey presents a Christian-centric, not to be confused with a Christo-centric, view of the changing times. Consider some of what he said in this presentation:
Why are people angry?
It's because Christendom has ended.
The Enlightenment's ideas of freedom and democracy were borrowed from the best of Christianity.
The Enlightenment wanted to free people from superstitions and ignorance that was seen in Christianity. And those things existed because Christians are sinners.
An Enlightenment complaint was that Christianity taught people to go along with suffering and oppression. And yet the best of Christianity has always worked for positive change.
The above statements put a real damper on how Christianity is suppose to own its mistakes and sins. Godfrey would have done better to say that there are two presentations of Christianity: the Christianity of the Scriptures and the Christianity portrayed by Christians.
At the same time, while admitting that the Church sided with corruption and wealth, he only mentioned the Roman Church as doing so. During that same time period here in America, many Protestants believed in and promoted white supremacy as exhibited in the ethic cleansing of Native Americans from the land and embracing a race-based chattel slavery. I presumed he was including the 17th and 18th centuries here since he noted the failures of the Enlightenment demonstrated in the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror.
And what do we have today which relates to the Enlightenment according to Godfrey? We have Wokeness where either people are aware or not aware--that is comparable, according to Godfrey, to the Enlightenment where people were either enlightened or in the dark. And we should note that with battle over Wokeness, we are talking about how serious and pervasive are our past and current sins.
Yes, Godfrey does give some compliments to the Enlightenment. Godfrey also lays some criticism s at the feet of Christianity. But he does the latter in a guarded way so as to not to admit too much about our faults and sins while having reason to be proud because the best parts of the Enlightenment came from us and what our ancestors said and did.
Perhaps we Christians should note that people are angry, in part, because of the past existence of Christendom, not its end. We should note that we didn't supply the Enlightenment with its best parts. That there are times when what the best of Christians did in the past to implement positive change was insignificant because there were so few of those best Christians that they became outliers to their time and place.
To share the Gospel, we need to preach Christ and Him crucified rather than to argue over what blame and credit Christians deserve to receive for what they did in the past. Fortunately for all of us, our faith rests in Christ, not in each other.
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Dec 14
To Jerry Saylor and his article whose title protests against a totalitarian democracy but spends offers a more detailed critique against the "Heresy of Equality.' This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.
When one condemns anti-racists for being pro-equality, then we should see a flurry of red flags raising. The same when we see the condemnation of those protesting for full equality for the LGBT community. Who else doesn't deserve equality according to those who condemn?
Certainly equality trumps the intentions of those who participating in the writing of The Constitution. But if law is based on equality, then how can equality trump the rule of law?
That the above article appeared on a religiously conservative website should surprise no one. Religious conservatives have a strong penchant for hierarchy in society and authoritarian rule. History demonstrates that. That is the case because there is a great deal of stress on authoirty figures and structures within most conservative religions. But here, it seems that we see an example of a conservative who wants the outside world to suffer from or enjoy, take your pick, what is experienced by those inside a conservative religion.
For all of Saylor's complaints, with some false accusations, what equality does is to trump tribalism with its moral relativity and its inherent group authoritarianism. And in doing so, promoting equality can provide a firm basis for more just and fair laws. I don't know anyone who promotes equality who expects an egalitarian utopia. But we do expect improvement. And considering our nation's history, it is far better to work for improvement by correcting past and present mistakes and even atrocities than to be a right-wing dissident who promotes an old and very flawed former status quo.
